CASE Study: Santa Fe Owner Lands$60,383 in First Year

Challenge: Deliver exceptional service to a vacation rental owner jaded by a previous bad experience with a property manager.

Background

When Leah Fineberg and her husband Don decided to move to California to be nearer to their grandchildren, they knew they didn’t want to sell their Santa Fe house. They decided the best way to keep it in the family would be to rent it as a vacation rental, so Leah gamely struck out to manage everything from a distance.

“I tried for about a month,” Leah laughs. “But I’m not a self-starter.” She quickly handed the reins over to a local property manager, and ran into three enormous issues right away: a strict one-year contract, an astronomical 35% fee, and absolutely no flexibility. “You have to have white towels. You have to use our cleaning service. You have to this, you have to that.”

Leah felt like she was working for her manager more than the manager was working for her!

“

The difference was so clear. Evolve’s was so simple and you could cancel at any time!”

“

Evolve is just better at everything. I can’t think of one thing that I haven’t been happy with.”

Solution

Leah knew after the first few months that she was leaving her property manager, and by the time her one-year contract was up, she’d done her research and decided on Evolve. “The difference was so clear. Even if you only looked at the contract: the manager’s was so complicated and so strict, and Evolve’s was so simple. And you could cancel at any time!”

While Leah definitely appreciates Evolve’s much lower 10% booking fee and the fact that she gets to keep far more of her rental income, she raves about the human connection most of all. “You call and they pick up the phone. Everyone is intelligent, they understand your problem, they don’t read off a script, they’re real people. It’s wonderful.”

Performance

Time with Evolve

1 year

Nights Booked

117

Total Bookings

26

Rental Income

$60,383

Results

Leah came to Evolve at the beginning of the booking season for Santa Fe, and her lovely property took off like a shot - we landed her $28,667 worth of bookings in her first three months! By year’s end, she had cleared $60,383 and substantially improved her take-home income with the huge decrease in the fees she pays for management.

Evolve has also improved her income overall, raised her property’s profile, and netted her more reviews, but Leah shrugs these improvements off. “Booking income’s a bit better, I’d say, maybe 10% better. But even if we’d made less than we did before, it’d be worth it.”

Tell you what, Leah. We’ll keep earning you the best rental income possible AND delivering the service you love. Is it a deal?